A "Friendly" Conversation with My Younger Brother, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka

Time seemed to stretch endlessly along the path.

The afterglow of the setting sun filtered through the leaves, casting mottled shadows across Kiyotaka Ayanokoji's expressionless face and making him look even more like a finely crafted doll devoid of warmth.

In an instant, Yuefeng's brain raced at high speed:

Plan A: Play dumb. "Huh? Injured? No, this ointment is something I bought to prevent muscle soreness, hahaha..." — 99.9% chance of failure. Kiyotaka wasn't someone who could be fooled with a "hahaha."

Plan B: Change the subject. "Oh, Kiyotaka, what a coincidence. You came to the library too?" — 99% chance of failure. He had obviously come specifically for him.

Plan C: Confess honestly. "Yeah, I caught a classmate who nearly fell in the library yesterday and crashed into a bookshelf myself." — Unknown. But it seemed like the least troublesome and least "suspicious" answer.

Yuefeng chose C. He tried to relax his facial muscles and put on as natural a smile as possible, tinged with a little helplessness. "Yeah, I helped a classmate in the library yesterday and bumped into something by accident. Just a minor injury. It's nothing."

He waved the ointment in his hand. "See? A classmate gave it to me. It works really well."

He deliberately emphasized that it had been "given by a classmate," attempting to steer the topic away from the injury itself and toward the safer, more ordinary subject of interacting with classmates.

At the same time, he carefully observed Kiyotaka's reaction.

Kiyotaka's gaze moved away from the ointment and settled on Yuefeng's face again.

That gaze was so calm it made his scalp prickle, as though he were scanning an object and analyzing its composition, condition, and potential uses.

He showed no curiosity whatsoever about the matter of "helping a classmate," nor did he comment on the "minor injury." He merely continued in that even, unruffled tone:

"You're in Class C."

"Yeah, Class C." Yuefeng nodded, inwardly complaining, Wasn't that obvious?

It was written clearly on the bulletin board. Yet he maintained that faint fake smile. "Seems we're not in the same class. That's a shame."

Shame my ass! Yuefeng added inwardly. Being in the same class as you would put me under even more pressure!

"My father arranged it." Kiyotaka's tone was so flat it was almost unbelievable.

Yuefeng's heart skipped a beat.

There it was. As expected, he had mentioned "Father."

He kept smiling, but added just the right amount of helplessness and faint rebellion befitting a teenager forced to transfer schools. "Yeah, he always has some... peculiar ideas."

He shifted the blame onto "Father" while implying that he had not come willingly, trying to draw even the slightest boundary between himself and Kiyotaka.

Kiyotaka said nothing. He simply looked at him quietly.

There was still no emotional fluctuation in those dark brown eyes, yet Yuefeng felt an invisible pressure.

It wasn't the overt, aggressive oppression Ryuen Kakeru gave off, but something deeper, more absolute... scrutiny.

As though every disguise he wore and every thought he had was laid bare before those eyes.

Yuefeng was almost unable to endure the pressure of that silence and was ready to make up any excuse to slip away.

Then Kiyotaka spoke again, asking a question that instantly sent Yuefeng's alertness soaring.

"How is Class C?"

How was it? What did he mean, how was it? The class atmosphere? The students? Or... was he referring to someone in particular, such as Ryuen Kakeru?

Yuefeng's mental CPU began running at full speed.

Kiyotaka would never ask a meaningless question.

The question seemed casual, but considering that he had just witnessed Yuefeng threatening Ishizaki with "cheating"—

—and considering Father's inexplicable task of "guiding" him, this question was practically a depth charge.

He was probing him.

Probing Yuefeng's impression of Class C, probing his stance, probing whether he had already begun to "fit into" or "make use of" Class C.

He might even have been probing whether Yuefeng had done anything in Class C according to Father's instructions.

Yuefeng carefully considered his words and decided to play it safe. "Um... it's pretty lively.

"The classmates all... have strong personalities. The teachers are pretty good at teaching too."

He avoided specific people and events, giving an extremely vague answer that was practically diplomatic jargon.

"Strong personalities." Kiyotaka repeated the phrase. His tone remained flat, but Yuefeng couldn't shake the feeling that there was something more behind his words.

He did not press further. Instead, he changed the subject, his gaze seemingly drifting over the ointment in Yuefeng's hand again.

"Hiyori Shiina."

He stated the name precisely.

The hairs on Yuefeng's back nearly stood on end. He knew!

He not only knew about what had happened in the library yesterday, he also knew it had been Hiyori Shiina! How did he know?

Had someone else in the library seen it and told him?

Or had he... been keeping an eye on Class C's movements all along, including those of his newly arrived "brother"?

"Ah, yes, Shiina. She's a very quiet girl who likes reading.

"I really have to thank her for recommending this ointment yesterday." Yuefeng tried his best to make his voice sound natural.

He replaced "recommended" with "gave," once again downplaying the unusual nature of the incident and positioning Hiyori Shiina as merely "a friendly classmate."

Kiyotaka tilted his head slightly. That tiny movement looked particularly abrupt on his expressionless face, as though a precision instrument were making a minute adjustment to one of its parameters.

"Quiet. Likes reading." He repeated the words slowly, then looked at Yuefeng with those unfathomable eyes and asked a second question that made Yuefeng's scalp tingle:

"Did she smile at you?"

Yuefeng: "...?"

What kind of question was that? Whether Hiyori Shiina had smiled at him or not—what did that have to do with Class C, with Father's arrangements, or with any "serious business" at all?

Yet Kiyotaka asked with utter seriousness, as if this were a crucial variable that needed to be incorporated into a data analysis model.

Yuefeng tried his best to recall.

Yesterday in the library, Hiyori Shiina seemed to have... kept her head lowered the whole time, her face flushed, her voice quiet.

Her smile... maybe there had been one? Or maybe not? In that situation, who would even notice whether the other person had smiled?

"...I think... maybe?" Yuefeng answered uncertainly, feeling as though he were trying to answer an unsolvable philosophical question.

"Like... a polite smile?" he added, trying to bring the definition of "smile" back into the most ordinary social context.

Kiyotaka nodded, his face still completely blank.

Yet Yuefeng somehow felt that Kiyotaka had... recorded or analyzed that answer in some way.

Just as Yuefeng was starting to feel dizzy from the bizarre rhythm of the conversation, Kiyotaka's third question followed immediately. This one was even more direct—and even more inexplicable:

"Did you come here to find me?"

Here it came! The core question! Yuefeng instantly pulled himself together.

He knew this was what Kiyotaka truly wanted to ask.

The earlier questions about Class C and Hiyori Shiina had probably been buildup—or rather, distractions meant to observe his reaction.

Deny it? That would mean directly going against Father's orders, and it might make Kiyotaka even more suspicious.

After all, Father had arranged for him to come here. There had to be a reason.

Admit it? Wouldn't that be the same as telling Kiyotaka, "I came to monitor you, then take you back," directly placing himself on the opposing side?

In one thousandth of a second, Yuefeng's brain weighed the options.

A complicated expression appeared on his face, a mixture of embarrassment, helplessness, and faint dissatisfaction. Thirty percent of it was genuine; the other seventy was an act.

"To be honest, I'm not really sure either." He spread his hands, his tone carrying a hint of complaint.

"Father's decisions are always sudden. He had me transfer here and said... he hoped we could attend the same school.

"As for why I ended up in Class C, it was probably just the school's random assignment."

He once again emphasized "Father's arrangements" and "the school's random assignment," portraying himself as an equally passive, even somewhat dissatisfied pawn, lowering Kiyotaka's hostility and wariness.

He paused and looked at Kiyotaka, deliberately letting just the right amount of brotherly curiosity and... distance show in his eyes.

"What about you? How is Class D? Have you... gotten used to it?" He tossed the question back, both changing the subject and testing Kiyotaka's attitude toward Class D.

Kiyotaka fell silent for several seconds.

To Yuefeng, those few seconds felt as long as a century.

He could practically hear his heart pounding in his chest, and the wound on his back began to ache faintly again.

Then Kiyotaka looked away, toward the distant spire of the library, and said in his usual flat, emotionless tone:

"Class D is interesting."

Interesting?

Yuefeng ranted wildly in his heart: What was interesting about Class D?

Was Horikita's conversation-killing bluntness interesting? Or was Sudo's hair-trigger temper interesting?

Or was Kushida's superb acting interesting? You called that interesting?

Was CPU-kun's definition of "interesting" a little different from that of normal people?

But all he could show on his face was an understanding yet unconvinced smile. "Is that so? As long as you find it interesting."

The conversation seemed to reach a deadlock.

The sun sank a little lower, stretching their shadows long.

Students occasionally passed along the path, casting curious glances at the pair of brothers who looked alike yet possessed completely different temperaments before hurrying away.

"The ointment," Kiyotaka suddenly said again, his gaze returning to Yuefeng's hand. "Use it soon."

After saying that, he no longer looked at Yuefeng, as if he had already obtained all the information he wanted.

He turned and walked directly away, heading in the direction opposite the library with those steady, unremarkable steps. Before long, he vanished into the deepening twilight.

Yuefeng remained where he was until Kiyotaka's back was completely out of sight. Only then did he let out a long breath, feeling as though cold sweat had soaked through his back.

That brief conversation had been more exhausting than running a thousand meters.

Every question Kiyotaka asked felt like a riddle, and every look in his eyes seemed to be reading data.

Yuefeng had no idea how much Kiyotaka knew, how much he had guessed, or what attitude Kiyotaka had toward him as this so-called "older brother."

Was it wariness? Observation? Indifference? Or... some subtle, indescribable emotion that belonged between "brothers"?

Yuefeng couldn't make heads or tails of it.

He lowered his head to look at the tube of ointment in his hand, then recalled Kiyotaka's final words: "Use it soon."

Was that... concern? Or merely advice based on the objective fact that an injury needed treatment?

"I really... can't figure him out.

Is this guy's way of thinking really something a human can understand?" Yuefeng rubbed his throbbing temples. Talking to Kiyotaka for a few minutes was more mentally exhausting than dealing with Ryuen for an entire day.

Still, at least this encounter hadn't immediately triggered any terrifying consequences.

Kiyotaka seemed to have temporarily accepted the premise that Yuefeng had been transferred against his will, didn't fully understand his father's intentions, and was somewhat helpless about his current situation.

"Take it slow. You can't rush when dealing with a CPU.

Besides... there's plenty of time, right?" Yuefeng tucked the ointment into his pocket and continued toward the library on legs that still felt a little weak.

Though that "plenty of time" sounded full of unknown challenges that would probably be a complete pain.

At least the ointment Shiina had given him looked legitimate. He should try it tonight when he got back.

As he walked, he couldn't help glancing back once more in the direction Kiyotaka had disappeared.

The sun had completely sunk beneath the horizon, leaving only a final smear of dark red afterglow in the sky.

"Class D is pretty interesting, isn't it?" Yuefeng muttered softly, the corner of his mouth pulling into a helpless, self-mocking curve.

"I think having a little brother like you next door in Class C is what's truly 'interesting.'"